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“No Ayla” Ryland looks up sharply, shaking his head For the first time since I’ve known hi to withhold the his chin to aze “It wasn’t for me It was for you”
“For me?”
He nods “It was always for you That’s the only reason I tried to convince Marcus to back off I… I thought about you all the fucking tiht you would be safer, that you’d have a better life, if eren’t in it”
I blink at his under myself This is the most openly Ryland has talked to me in… well, maybe ever I want to pepper him with questions, but I’ back the other way again, and he’ll go silent
And it turns out he doesn’t need the questions anyway Unprompted, he continues
“Marcus and I fought about it all the damn tiht For more than two years, we kept our distance, but we all watched you We all kept tabs on you” He lets out a soft laugh “I don’t think any of us could help ourselves But at least you never kneere there Until that night you al broke”
I nod, reed from the shadows as if they’d once been a part of the darkness theht afterward If I hadn’t seen Marcus’s distinctive eye, if I hadn’t called out to stop hiht never have knoho stepped forward to help me
That’s not true, a little voice whispers in my head You kneay Some part of you always knew
Ryland shakes his head, running a hand through the short strands of his alht, I told Marcus it wasn’t too late We could still walk away from you—sever ties coood—but I should’ve kno fucking wrong I was”
“You didn’t sever ties,” I say quietly, speaking the obvious
Ryland’s eyes flicker as they , Ayla We spent two and a half years hovering on the periphery of your life, but the ot close… it was like a barrier came down that was impossible to put back up It was the first fix And we kept co back for more”
Iat the sheet beneath me as his words sink in
Like a drug
I’ve thought the sa about these three men and their effect on me The way they seem to immolate reason and self-control Self-preservation, even When it comes to them, I can never seem to help myself
Honestly, I’m not sure it’s better or worse to know that I seem to have the same effect on them In a party of addicts, does anyone ever say stop?